Last Thoughts (and Recording of Sermon) on Maundy Thursday

Last night was a good worship service.  I felt a bit frazzled at first.  We left a bit early, but afternoon traffic around Asheville still left us almost late.  

That's not true.  We got to the church with 10 minutes to spare, and most people came after us.  Still, I was feeling a bit frazzled.  It's one of the disadvantages of the geography that is part of this SAM experience.

Worship went well, and I was pleased with my sermon, which you can view here on my YouTube channel.  I put the sermon manuscript in this blog post.  If you follow along, you'll see that there are places that I expand on thoughts in the manuscript.  I wasn't thrilled with the ending when I wrote it, but I like the impromptu ending better.  I felt something moving through me, as if the Holy Spirit knew what someone listening needed to hear.  I am always happy to be that vessel.

As my spouse and I reflected on the sermon on the drive across the mountains to get back home, I did wonder if the sermon needed firmer boundaries between the Holy Week holidays.  I still worry/wonder if the sermon has too much of a Good Friday vibe.  But since Faith Lutheran doesn't have a Good Friday worship with a sermon, I am O.K. with that. 

Quick Maundy Thursday Post

 Another Maundy Thursday, and I am writing later than I usually would.  I was finishing both my Maundy Thursday and Good Friday sermons, trying to connect the printer, getting ready to drive down the mountain to teach at Spartanburg Methodist College.

After I am done teaching, I will drive back up the mountain, stop at my Lutheridge house, and then my spouse and I will drive to Bristol, Tennessee, so that I can lead Maundy Thursday service at Faith Lutheran.  There have been many moments this morning when I wondered why I didn't just move my classes online.  Today will be more driving than many Maundy Thursdays in the past.

I am used to working my way through Holy Week, and I am glad that my seminary doesn't have classes--one of the benefits of a theological education, as opposed to other types of school I could be doing.

Still, my writing time today is short, so let me end with a good quote.  In her book An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor comments on the Last Supper: "With all the conceptual truths in the universe at his disposal, he [Jesus] did not give something to think about together when he was gone. Instead, he gave them concrete things to do--specific ways of being together in their bodies--that would go on teaching them what they needed to know when he was no longer around to teach them himself" (43).  Jesus gave us all "embodied sacraments of bread, wine, water, and feet" (44).

Hearing the Holy Week Story Anew

Today is Palm Sunday, or for some of us Passion Sunday.  Some of us will hear the whole Holy week story today, and some of us will hear it throughout the week, and some of us will do both--the whole story today and then returning to church and/or devotional time that returns us to the story.

Today in my sermon, I'll suggest that we approach this repetition as a lectio divina.  As we hear the story again and again, what word or phrase lodges within us?

We will be hearing stories that many of us have heard many times before. How can we hear them with fresh ears?  One way is to use the Ignatian discipline of trying to imagine ourselves as part of the story.

One year I was startled to realize how much I identified with Pontius Pilate as an administrator. That year, I saw the Good Friday story in a different light. One year I read Mary Oliver's "The Poet Thinks about the Donkey" (you can read it here: https://predmore.blogspot.com/2016/03/poem-poet-thinks-about-donkey-by-mary.html). I hadn't thought much about the donkey that carries Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, and my perspective shifted.

Here are some ideas to get you thinking. Tell the story from the perspective of:

--the person who cleans up after the last supper

--the towels used by Jesus to wash the feet of the disciples

--the cross itself

--an indifferent observer on Palm Sunday

--the sibling of Jesus who had always seen this day (Good Friday? Palm Sunday?) coming

--the disciple we don't usually hear about

--the rooster that crows three times

Here's hoping for a creative week-end, in all the ways our creativity can manifest itself!

Quilt Camp, Eucharist, and Maundy Thursday

 I realize that I haven't talked much about the religious aspect of Quilt Camp.  Even though it's held at Lutheridge, a Lutheran retreat center, it's less overtly religious than some of the adult programming there.  I've spent some time wondering if my friends of other faiths would like the retreat.  I think that all but my friends who are strict atheists (the type annoyed by religious people) would.

The room was set up with this space under the rock climbing wall.  From a distance, it looks like a simple stage, barely elevated, a display platform for quilts and rocking chairs--a way to give the huge room a touch of hominess.  

But it was where we faced for evening devotions, which were optional.  The last night we had communion.  We were able to do this because one of our participants is ordained by the Baptist church--during that brief moment when the Southern Baptists ordained women.

We had a wide variety of Christians in the group; if anyone was of another faith, or atheist, or agnostic, she didn't say.  After communion, one of the younger women made a group announcement.  She said that she had never been to a service where a woman handed her the elements for communion, and then, with her voice cracking into tears, she talked about how meaningful it was. 

Unlike other retreats, there was no Bible study, no group work; we spent most of our time at our individual tables sewing and sewing and sewing.  Occasionally there would be conversations, which occasionally turned to the topic of God.  One woman said to me, "It's in the Bible, right?  So therefore, we know it's true, right?"

Well, she did ask me, and so I gave her the gentle version of why we can't assert that, or at least why I can't assert that if she means true as in factual.  I talked about how I view the Bible as the writer of the text telling us of an experience of God, but not the only experience, and perhaps not even a true experience as we would define it today.  Having spent months studying the letters of Paul, I am not the person to lead your Bible study, if you want a leader who will tell you that God dictated the words to the Bible writer, so of course there's no bias.

She didn't run away in horror; in fact, we had a good conversation.  But I was also relieved that it was a casual conversation.  At the God Spa retreat, I heard some genuinely crummy theology (as in "God never gives us more than we can handle" and "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away"), but as a regular participant, I didn't see my role during group Bible study time to be the one who rips everyone's theological crutches out from under them.

I write this post on Maundy Thursday, a time when I might be writing about foot washing or meal sharing.  But the community I experienced at Quilt Camp seemed just as vivid a witness of the power of love in the world.  We were able to be together, in all of our variations of age, skill, knowledge, and resources.  We were able to cheer each other on.  We had lots of advice, for those who wanted it.  

I would love to see more Christian churches expand the vision of what it means to be a community based in love.  What would Maundy Thursday look like if we celebrated more than Jesus and 12 disciples and a last meal and a footwashing?

Palm Sunday at the Quilt Retreat

How do we respond when we meet the Divine in unexpected places?

How do we react to reminders that of God's humanity?

Can we  worship a God who has been working through time and outside of time to transform this human condition?

Do we believe in the promise that resurrection will break through, even in the most unlikely circumstances?

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Palm Sunday, April 10, 2022:

Liturgy of the Palms 

Psalm
Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29
Gospel
Luke 19:28-40

Liturgy of the Passion 
First reading
Isaiah 50:4-9a
Psalm
Psalm 31:9-16
Second reading
Philippians 2:5-11
Gospel
Luke 22:14-23:56 or Luke 23:1-49


Those of us who have been going to church for awhile have heard these stories dozens of times. If we go to many or all of the Holy Week services, we'll hear these stories again and again this week. As we enter Holy Week, how can we hear them differently?

This year, what would happen if we imagined these stories from the perspective of a variety of characters? I imagine that many of us hear these stories and imagine ourselves one of the disciples. But what if we told the story through the view of the palms? What if we thought about the donkey's perspective? The poet Mary Oliver did just that in "The Poet Thinks About the Donkey," a poem that you can find here: https://predmore.blogspot.com/2016/03/poem-poet-thinks-about-donkey-by-mary.html.

The journey that takes us from Palm Sunday to Good Friday offers us some serious reminders. If we put our faith in the world, we're doomed. If we get our glory from the acclaim of the secular world, we'll find ourselves rejected sooner, rather than later.

Right now, we live in a larger culture that prefers crucifixion to redemption. For some of us, we see a brutal world that embraces crucifixion: no second chances, perhaps no first chances.  The world hurls a new disease at us while reminding us of old fears, like nuclear weapons.

The Palm/Passion Sunday readings remind us that the world has always been this way, although the particulars change. Jesus and the disciples lived in an empire far more brutal than the ones that Northern Hemisphere, western culture Christians inhabit. We may find comfort in our smaller communities, but we are called to live in ways that will likely bring us into some sort of conflict with the larger culture.

We may not end up hanging on a cross, but we may be among those weeping at the foot of the cross. We may have seen this ending coming, as we have watched our loved ones headed towards an ending that might have been avoidable. We may find ourselves asking, weeping, lamenting: "Is there no other way?"

We know that the story doesn't end on Good Friday. We know that God will make a way when humans cannot see a way. We know that God promises resurrection, even when we can only see ruin every direction we look.

We worship a God who has been working through time and outside of time to transform this human condition. We don't always see it, but Easter assures us that the process is in place and that resurrection will break through, even in the most unlikely circumstances.

Maundy Thursday in a Time of Pandemic Plague

This is probably not the first Maundy Thursday in a time of pandemic plague, but for most of us, we probably weren't alive for any of the past ones.  Perhaps a few of us remember the great flu epidemic of 1918--did that impact Holy Week?  And we weren't alive for the huge scourges of the past (bubonic plague in the middle ages and subsequent centuries, the smallpox plagues that wiped out most of the native populations in the Americas when Europeans arrived).

This is not the first Maundy Thursday we've spent in isolation, but most of us haven't experienced it.  Certain populations have always spent the holiest days in isolation:  the sick, the elderly, those cloistered for other reasons.

Most of us have experienced the sadness of a holiday that isn't what we expected it to be.  Most of us understand the loneliness we feel when we can't be with our beloved communities.

Some of us are luckier than past generations:  we can be together virtually.  We can see each other when we speak by way of technology, if we have the technology.  We can have screen to screen communication.  My church will do a livestream of a stripped down Maundy Thursday service.  There are lots of resources out there, and many of us will have access to them.  It could be worse.

But it will be strange.  And maybe we will discover that the feeling of strangeness helps to enrich our experience.

Those of us who have been worshipping for years may have become inured to the power of these Holy Days.  In past years, the familiarity of the readings may have helped us zone out.

This year, nothing feels familiar.  This year, many of us feel broken open in new places.  This year, perhaps the Holy Spirit will move in us and through us in new ways.

Maundy Thursday Musings, the 2019 Version

--I begin the day as I usually do, thinking about the calendar day, thinking about the liturgical calendar, thinking about the day in past years and deeper history.  Of course, during Holy Week these thoughts take on a particular color.

--Today I am thinking about Christians around the world who will celebrate this day that celebrates the last meal of Jesus, according to tradition.  Some congregations will hear about Jesus and the washing of the feet.  Some will focus on the meal itself.  Some will ponder the betrayals about to come.

--I think about how those disciples were so sure of themselves.  Judas who had become disgusted with Jesus.  Peter who knew that he would remain faithful.  As always, I think of the ones we don't know about.  The one who prepared the meal.  The one who would do the clean up and wished that the meal would be over so that the clean up could begin.  The one who needed to slip away to take care of his sick mother or take a quick smoking break or just get away from the fawning attention of the other affirmation hungry disciples.

--This morning I saw the moon setting as I looked out my kitchen window.  I can see out of my kitchen window now because I took down the wretched scrap of cloth that we used as a curtain for many years.  I washed it, even though I knew I would throw it away.  That detail seems fitting for a Maundy Thursday poem which I have yet to write.

--In past years, I might have made bread, and I'm tempted to do it this year.  But I have cleaning to do--my sister and nephew arrive this afternoon, and at the very least, I must get rid of the grossness in the bathroom.  I've been keeping the toilet clean, but the sink, bathtub, and floors need some attention.  I also hope to clean the hardwood floors throughout the house.  The other types of restoration that I had hoped to do (sorting through some piles of paperwork, unpacking some dishes, on and on I could go) will wait for a day/week-end/retirement when I have more time.

--I think of the washing of the disciples' feet, the grossness of those feet.  My Maundy Thursday cleaning seems appropriate.  My poor house, this past year of renovations and neglect, this long, slow slog.

--Because we have houseguests arriving, I did some grocery shopping yesterday.  I spend a good part of each day trying to obey Christ's mandatum that we love each other.  I am not certain that Jesus would approve of my showing of love by buying my nephew a bag of Doritos in every flavor offered by the smaller Publix near my school.

--We will have a version of the Last Supper, by which I mean my spouse has bought a lot of lamb, my nephew's current favorite meat.  We will also have bread, likely made by us, and perhaps grilled.

--It will be a different Maundy Thursday, but it will satisfy.

Palm Sunday's Launch into Holy Week

We almost always close our Palm Sunday service this way:

This time there will be no flight to Egypt.
The donkey has too much to carry, too far.
The shadows wait for me.  Around the table at Passover
Among those in high places, in the condemned cell,
On the hill outside.  Fear haunts my waking moments,
and I cannot sleep.  Why has God forsaken me?

People:
     The crowd today is with me.  But not for long.
      They are the powerless ones (the ones who matter).

The ones who count are counting.
Time is running out.  This time, there will be no flight to Egypt.


I think the above is from Cry of the Whole Congregation by Walter Wangerin.  We use the liturgy/chancel drama for Palm Sunday, so that's why I'm guessing at the author's identity.

I find it the most meaningful part of Passion Sunday.  It reminds us that Jesus has been on a collision course with the Roman empire since his birth--or since the Wise Men showed up to let Herod know that he had a rival.

And yes, I understand that these stories are not exactly true, in the way that we define true as factual. 

But in the other way that we define true, this final Palm Sunday passage reminds us about the totality of Christ's life.

Writing Prompts: Justice and Holy Week

I sent this prompt to my Lenten Journaling Group, and I thought it was worth sharing more widely.

As I think of the week past and the week to come, two prompts come to mind. Feel free to use them as you like and/or as the Spirit moves you:

Writing Prompt 1:

We've had a great week of justice action in our church and larger community in South Florida. Last week I scribbled on a bulletin, and yesterday morning, I started to think about a poem. These ideas spurred my creativity:

We have built our house of justice in hurricane country.

We have made a home in the swamp of despair

In this abandoned waste dump, we have claimed a homestead.

If we then create some fill in the blanks, maybe we get some different options:

We have built ________ in hurricane country.

We have built our house of justice in ________.

We have made ______ in the swamp of despair.

In this _______, we have claimed a homestead.

In this abandoned waste dump, we have claimed __________.

If you want to tie your journaling back to Bible reading, return to the Psalms and notice how the Psalmist often uses similar language for striking effect--different metaphors, to be sure, but similar effect. Think of Psalm 137, with it's image of weeping by the rivers of Babylon and hanging harps in the poplars. I am guessing that the writer of that Psalm didn't really go to the river to weep and hang a harp in the tree--it's an image of deep sadness and abandonment, and it works beautifully.

The not-often-read book of Lamentations too. And many of the prophets. And Jesus himself was known for speaking/teaching in odd parables. It's a way to jolt our brains out of complacency.

Writing Option #2

Sunday is Palm Sunday and/or Passion Sunday--the beginning of Holy Week. We will be hearing stories that many of us have heard many times before. How can we hear them with fresh ears.

One year I was startled to realize how much I identified with Pontius Pilate as an administrator. That year, I saw the Good Friday story in a different light. One year I read Mary Oliver's "The Poet Thinks about the Donkey" (you can read it here: https://predmore.blogspot.com/2016/03/poem-poet-thinks-about-donkey-by-mary.html). I hadn't thought much about the donkey that carries Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, and my perspective shifted.

Here are some ideas to get you thinking. Tell the story from the perspective of:

--the person who cleans up after the last supper

--the towels used by Jesus to wash the feet of the disciples

--the cross itself

--an indifferent observer on Palm Sunday

--the sibling of Jesus who had always seen this day (Good Friday? Palm Sunday?) coming

--the disciple we don't usually hear about

--the rooster that crows three times

Here's hoping for a creative week-end, in all the ways our creativity can manifest itself!

The Manger and the Tomb

I've been thinking about the tomb, mainly because I plan to write a poem in the voice of the tomb.  I feel like I know that tombs in the time of Jesus would have been more like caves, and not caves that were carved out for the sake of being a tomb, but structures that already existed.

I'm also thinking about the stable and the manger--here too, we've been told that it wouldn't have been a stable like the kind we might find on farms in the U.S., the kind of stable with haylofts and feed troughs.  The stable, too, was more likely to be more like a cave than the wooden structures that many of us associate with the Christmas story.

Yesterday at the noon Tenebrae service, I thought about coming full circle--the baby in the manger in the cave of a stable is laid to rest in a cave of a tomb.  I thought about all the life-in-death and death-in-life situations in which so many of us wait.

Today on this Saturday, the day before Easter, we wait.  We are lucky, some of us.  We wait for the end of the Easter story that we already know.  We have heard the Good News that He is risen.

Some of us will go to Easter vigils.  Some of us will bake bunny cakes or create unicorn frappucino drinks.  Some of us will go to choir rehearsal, while others are preparing the property for Easter.  Some of us wish we had a new Easter outfit.

Some of us are marked by cinders and can't imagine how new life can rise out of the ashes.  Maybe we go through the movements anyway.  Maybe we transform our sorrow into some sort of quest:  for justice, for change, for a better vision of the world.

It's been interesting to participate in Holy Week with the news stories of shootings--the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shootings and the police shootings--always in my mind.  I am haunted by the juxtaposition of the women weeping at the cross with the news stories of immigrant families ripped apart both in the U.S. and elsewhere.  I cannot see how we move forward, but it feels so important to both move forward and move carefully.  We seem just steps away from complete self-immolation as a society.

Christ's passage from the cross to Easter morning is a promise to us all, even if we're unsure of the process.  God can take the most profound ugliness and transform it into a thing of beauty.

Maundy Thursday Love

This morning, I read the Maundy Thursday text about Jesus washing the feet of his disciples and his mandate to love each other--thus setting into motion thousands of years of debate about what it means to love each other and how we demonstrate that love with our actions.

It's been a Holy Week of love and service for me.  When I think back about this week, I will likely remember all the furniture moving that I did--not in my house, but at school.  We decided that we wanted a different kind of New Student Orientation, one that involved sharing a meal together after dividing the new students by program of study.  We have 2 classrooms connected with a folding wall, so we have the space.  But it involved moving all the tables that were configured for classes into tables configured for meal sharing.

We don't have a team of custodians who can be instructed to do that work.  The Admissions team needed to be making phone calls to prospective students.  We don't have many full-time faculty at all, so most of the faculty are elsewhere in this week between classes.  In short, I did it, and I did it with some amount of joy--although occasionally I made a joke about having gone to school for many years to be trained to move tables.

I also did a lot of shopping:  for tablecloths, for other paper products, for food.  Let me just say a prayer of apology to all of the church women in my past who insisted that we wash the cheap, plastic throw-away tablecloths, which used to exasperate me, but now I have some understanding.  It would be expensive to buy new tablecloths for every event.

Today I will do the work of restoring the room to two classrooms.  I will say Maundy Thursday prayers for all the new students who came for New Student Orientation.  I will say Maundy Thursday prayers for all who will study in the rooms and the rest of campus.  I will look out the windows with their lovely view of the surrounding neighborhood and the larger county, and I will pray for us all.  I will see the planes coming and going from the airport, and I'll pray for travelers--and then I'll pray for us all.

Some might tell me that these actions are not what Jesus had in mind when he commanded us to love each other.  I would argue that's exactly what he meant.  These aren't the only actions that show love, of course.  But that's the beautiful thing about this mandatum:  we have a whole universe of ways to show our love.

Meditation on Holy Week and Easter

The readings for Sunday, April 1, 2018:

First Reading: Acts 10:34-43

First Reading (Alt.): Isaiah 25:6-9

Psalm: Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Second Reading (Alt.): Acts 10:34-43

Gospel: Mark 16:1-8

Gospel (Alt.): John 20:1-18

Finally we move through Holy Week to Easter Sunday. At last, our Lenten pilgrimage draws to a close.  It's strange to write about Easter when we have yet to move through all of Holy Week.  But the Christian life invites us to live in this strangeness, the coming of God existing in various planes of time:  the past, the present, and the not yet.

Perhaps that state explains the disjointedness in which many of us find ourselves as the liturgical year rumbles on.  Perhaps you still linger back at As  h Wednesday. Perhaps you find the Good Friday texts more evocative than the Easter texts. Maybe you're in a state of joy, back with the shepherds hearing the angel choir.  Maybe, like Mary, you prefer silence and pondering the mystery.It's interesting how our emotional lives aren't always in sync with the liturgical seasons or the Lectionary.

 Maybe this year we can approach the Holy Week stories differently.   Maundy Thursday gives us a view of how to love each other.  Notice that it's about what we do:  we eat together, we wash each other's feet, we anoint with oil.  It's not about an emotion--it's about an action.  It's not a theory of love, but a concrete way of being loving.

We are called to break bread together, to drink wine together. We are called to invite the outcast to supper with us. We are called to care for each other's bodies--not to sexualize them or mock them or brutalize them, but to wash them tenderly. Thus fortified, we are called to announce that the Kingdom of God is breaking out among us in the world in which we live, and we are called to demand justice for the oppressed.

Perhaps we find ourselves more like the disciples who would transform the loving act of anointing with oil into a way to help the poor by selling that oil and giving the money to the poor.  It seems a good way to show love.  Jesus rebukes this way of thinking.  We will always have the poor; we won't always have the ones we love.  This year, a year when so many mourn such severe losses, those words speak to me.

Good Friday gives us a way to think about betrayal and how we can respond.  The Good Friday message is that we will all betray God.  But some of us will try again, while others will give up in abject despair.  Some of us will apologize and try to do better, while others will choose death.

I also find myself thinking about the tree that must wish for a great destiny, but is transformed into the cross,  an instrument of torture.  Likewise, Jesus, who has been in some amount of control of his own actions, but finds himself handed over to others.  In these past years when I've watched so many friends and colleagues battle cancer--handed over to the medical-industrial complex--the idea of the Passion takes on an excruciating hue.

Easter promises us that our efforts will not be in vain. In Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, N. T. Wright says forcefully, " . . . what you do in the Lord is not in vain. You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that's about to roll over a cliff" (208). We may not understand how God will transform the world. We may not be able to believe that bleakness will be defeated. But Easter shows us God's promise that death is not the final answer.

Spring reminds us that nature commits to resurrection. Easter reminds us of God's promise of resurrection. Now is the time for us to rekindle our resurrection selves.

A Poem for Holy Week

I am about to run out of writing time this morning--but in a way, that's good.  This morning, it means that I was able to sleep through the night, what I call the night, from 8:30 to 4:30.  Last night, we had a lovely evening on the front porch, eating our dinner of delicious dribs and drabs of leftovers from a week-end of cooking for our mostly blind college friend who was making a South Florida tour.  We enjoyed wine and occasionally neighbors walked by and we chatted.

One of them said, "We haven't seen you in awhile."  It's true--we seem to have gotten out of the front porch habit.  Why have we been choosing TV instead of porch time?  Part of the answer lies in the weather--if it's chilly, I'm not as interested in being outside--and I have a South Florida body thermostat by now, so it's been chilly.

Happily, we still have some time to enjoy the front porch before it becomes unbearably hot.  A resolution!

Since my writing time is so small, let me post a poem for Holy Week.  I wrote it many years ago, when I'd been teaching the American Lit survey class at the University of Miami.  Can you see the influence of Allen Ginsburg's "A Supermarket in California"?


Good Friday at the Grocery Store


Salmonella lurks in the spinach,
more vicious beasties in the beef and chicken.
Corpses wrapped in cellophane
under fluorescent lights that cast green shadows.

Homeless people haunt the night,
hungry for bread and beyond,
trundling belongings in rickety shopping carts.
The lights glow in empty
buildings that aren’t for them.

City of unclean feet and dirtier hands,
all night grocery stores and home improvement centers,
the music of militaristic bass beats
and muted churches.
People hungry to fill they know not what,
buzzing on fatigue and caffeine
and always, that ravenous fear
that chews their bones to dust.

Small groups gather in a catacomb of marble and wood,
lit by candles, sheltered
from the Capitalist world that threatens
to consume every last hope.

They know the rituals that fed
their grandparents although they have not practiced
them with faith. They read the sacred
texts; they pour the wine and break
the bread. The veil lifts,
the earth shakes, the kingdom
enters, slipping in through the broken scrim.

Contemplative Palm Sunday

Yesterday morning, I loaded up the car with palms and headed to the church as the sun rose (about 7:20 here).  I had volunteered to decorate the sanctuary for Palm Sunday.

I had a car full of palms, and my pastor had also cut palms--what a treat to live in Florida where we can decorate with abandon.

I spent a meditative half hour, thinking about where to put the palms and thinking about Palm Sundays past.  I remembered at our old church, after Hurricane Wilma destroyed the carpets, when the floors were concrete since it takes time after a hurricane to get the insurance money and then the building supply materials.  My spouse laid palms down the entire center aisle, which made it look thatched.  It was striking, but people were hesitant to walk on it.

I, too, put palms in the center aisle, but I left plenty of room for people to walk.  If they wanted to avoid the palms, there were pews without palms blocking the entry.  And of course, there are aisles up the side of the sanctuary.

I was delighted to see a 5 year old at the 11:00 service make a point to walk on each palm.  Did he make the connections between the day's readings and the palms?

I waved the palms as I walked them to places around the sanctuary and church grounds.  I thought about the fickleness of crowds who will sing "Hosanna" one day and "Crucify" a few days later.

I placed the palms along pathways.  I wondered if people would see the palms as pointing them towards the sanctuary, and once in the sanctuary, towards the altar.

In the end, the palms will go to various places around the grounds, left to decompose and return to the earth.  We don't let them dry and turn them into ashes for Ash Wednesday.  They don't burn evenly, and they leave a chunky ash behind--not really suitable for smudging.

I participated in the life of the church in all sorts of ways yesterday:  reading, anointing with oil, handchime practice, helping count the money, and clean up.  But my half hour of contemplation during the laying down of the palms (sounds better than decorating) was my favorite part of the day--totally unanticipated and restorative.

Shared Meals and a Poem for a Maundy Thursday

Here we are at Maundy Thursday again. How will churches celebrate this year?  My church will have a traditional noon service, and our evening service will be more experiential, a meal shared with a congregation that meets at our church and with members of a mosque which is a half block away.  We will discuss love across different cultures.

I say "we," but I will not be there.  Tonight is the last night in town for my sister and nephew; my mom and dad will be here until Tuesday.  My almost-11 year old nephew loves chicken wings, and my spouse loves grilling, so our last supper will be chicken wings. 

Will we go to Jaxson's?  Perhaps.  We went there last night, and my mom was sad to not have gotten to go.  I saw a box of a matzo on the counter and thought, ah, yes, Passover.

That reminded me of a time when my in-laws were down during Passover week.  We went out to eat in a seaside resort town, and the family at the table next to us whipped out their box of matzo.

I'm thinking of other Maundy Thursday meals I've made, other meals I've shared.  One Maundy Thursday at a different church, we did a Seder meal of sorts.  The impediment to doing a Seder during the daytime was that the preschool used every bit of space in the building except for the sanctuary.  I came up with a way we could have a meal in the back of the sanctuary.

As I researched the Seder, it became apparent that I had volunteered for more than I could accomplish.  So, I switched to a simpler meal.  I made a big pot of lentils and bought pita bread.  I bought feta cheese and olives.

We sat and ate and talked about how the simple meal was similar to the food that Jesus would have eaten regularly.  We talked about the Seder meal.  We talked about Maundy Thursday, since the people who came to the meal were like me, unable to get back for an evening service.

Did we also have a service?  I honestly cannot remember.  What I remember is the joy of sharing a meal, and everyone's surprise at how good lentils tasted.  I remember being pleased that my experiment worked.  We had just enough room for everyone who came.  If the whole church had attended--well, what a great problem that would have been, not having enough room.

But we had a small, select group, which I was fairly sure would happen, when I made the plans.  It was neat to sit in the sanctuary and enjoy a real meal, not the scrap of bread and sip of wine that we usually got. 

It was very cool to do Word and Sacrament in a completely different way--and wonderful that it seemed to work for people.

This week, with its mix of Spring holidays, Passover, Holy Week, and Easter, also reminds me of a poem I wrote long ago now, while all these images swirled in my brain and my quilt group met.  We wouldn't have had the meal that the poem describes, but everything else is factual. Well, I wasn't exactly the lapsed Lutheran in the sense that I once was, but like the rest of the poem, it's true, if not factual.

It was first published in Ruminate.


Eucharist

I knead the bread leavened with beer,
stew a lamb shank in a pot of lentils,
prepare a salad of apples, walnuts, and raisins,
sweetened with wine and honey.
No one ever had herbs as bitter as this late season lettuce.

My friends gather at dusk, a motley band
of ragtags, fleeing from the Philistines of academia:
a Marxist, a Hindu, a Wiccan, a Charismatic Catholic,
and me, a lapsed Lutheran longing for liturgy.

Later, having drunk several bottles of wine
with prices that could have paid our grad
school rents, we eat desserts from disparate
cultures and tell our daughters tales from our deviant days.
We agree to meet again.

Gnarled vegetables coaxed from their dark hiding places
transform into a hearty broth.
Fire transubstantiates flour and water into life giving loaves.
Outcasts scavenged from the margins of education
share a meal and memories and begin to mold
a new family, a different covenant.

The Calm Before Holy Week Begins

Today, across Christendom, churches will celebrate Palm Sunday; many churches will also celebrate Passion Sunday.  Today, we hurdle into Holy Week--many pastors will be leading as many as 15-20 services between this morning and Easter evening.  Even small churches like mine will add multiple services throughout the week.

Today, many of us will receive palms.  The leftover palms will be burned and mixed with oil and saved for next year's Ash Wednesday service, where they will be smudged on our foreheads and we will be reminded of our existential destination.

Palm Sunday reminds us that the people who will be our friends today may turn on us tomorrow.  The adoring crowds of today may turn accusatory by the end of the week. 

And yet, as we journey through our lives, suffering every sort of betrayal, the Holy Week trajectory reminds us of the joy we will also experience along the way:  good meals with friends, deep conversations, a God who comes to serve.

And the hectic hurry of Holy Week ends in Easter, where we are reminded of the ultimate promise:  no matter how bad it gets, God has a plan.  We may not be able to see it, we may not be able to believe it, but God is hard at the work and play that is the redemption of creation.

Easter Monday Reckonings

Here we are at Easter Monday, the day of exhaling for many of us, after an intense week of many religious services.  My thoughts have swirled with all the images of the religious observances this week, and I've thought of these lessons for all of us.

--Palm Sunday reminds us that the crowd that cheers for us on Sunday may be crying out for Crucifixion by Friday.

In what ways are we too invested in the way the world thinks of us?  How can we differentiate between fake cheer and genuine support?

--Some of our Maundy Thursday services mention Passover, which some traditions tell us Jesus was celebrating when he ate the last supper.  Passover reminds us that when deliverance comes, it may come quickly and we should be ready, with our sandals laced and our lunches ready.

What would you take with you if you had to leave quickly?  Do you know where your important documents are?  Do you have your writing projects in a portable format?  What are your most important pictures?  Where are they?

--Maundy Thursday shows us how to build community:  share a meal together.  How can we do more of that?

--Good Friday reminds us of all the ways we can betray the ones we love.  The Easter season tells us what to do when we have betrayed our loved ones:  apologize and try to love better. Peter's approach of apology is much better than Judas Iscariot's, the suicide route.

--I'm remembering the year we gave my nephew Easter stickers, which he loved and took great joy in sticking everywhere.  Each packet of stickers  only cost a few dollars, yet they brought more joy than an expensive present would have brought.

What inexpensive joys can we add to our lives with more regularity?

--Easter Sunday, the empty tomb, the followers looking for the living amongst the dead.  Where are we doing the same things?  Which practices give health and wholeness to our lives?  What entombs us?

--These holidays point to the possibility of renewal.  We might think of our own lives--where would we like to see a resurrection?  Are there projects that we've left for dead that we should revisit?  Are there dreams that have been enslaved that we should set free? What relationships might yet be revived?

Maundy Thursday Prayer Loom

Today is Good Friday, the day no bread can be consecrated.  My mind is full of past Good Fridays--the day that our church's labyrinth was vandalized, and I spent Good Friday helping to clean up and lay new roof tiles along the outline.  I think of the times that we got the grounds spruced up for Easter.  Last year we were on a plane to Hawaii, flying backwards across Good Friday.

This morning I'm feeling an interesting mix of contentment and anxiety.  I'm travelling tomorrow, off to two retreats, including one with Kathleen Norris at Mepkin Abbey.  My spouse stays home to take care of his teaching duties.  I will go to Good Friday service, sleep for a bit, and get up in the wee, small hours of the morning to blaze north.  I will see grad school friends, one of my best undergrad mentors, retreat friends, and 2 of my favorite locations on earth (Mepkin Abbey and Lutheridge).  I have a lot to do today to get ready.

But it will get done.  Today my heart is also happy.  Last night during our Maundy Thursday meal and service, I thought, this may be may favorite service.  Of course, I think that about many a service that's out of the ordinary.  I had similar thoughts about Ash Wednesday.

Oddly, I rarely feel that way about Easter.  As a Christian, Easter should be my favorite.  But it's not.

I like the non-Easter, non-Christmas services because they give us room to experiment.  Last night was amazing.  We've developed a service that incorporates a true dinner.  Not much experiment there.  No, last night's experiment was the prayer loom.

I wasn't sure if anyone would actually use it, and it was slow at first.  But eventually, everyone joined in the fun:

We had a variety of yarns, and I encouraged people to choose a yarn or texture that would represent their prayer.  I said that we would weave our individual prayers together into a tapestry.

We don't quite have a tapestry yet.  We will leave the loom up to see what happens.  I know that some people will return to weave some more.  And I plan to use it for Vacation Bible School.

I'm intrigued by smaller scale prayer looms, as well as this group project.  But more than that, I continue to be intrigued by prayer practices that incorporate some sort of physicality beyond speech and folded hands and kneeling.

Maundy Thursday and Romero's Martyrdom

I anticipated the interesting juxtaposition that comes tomorrow:  Good Friday and the Feast of the Annunciation.  I didn't realize that this year's Holy Week would bring us Maundy Thursday and the anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Romero.

I've written about the struggles in Central America that provided a backdrop to my college years, how we spent time thinking about what we would do if our compatriots were drafted and sent south to war.  I've written about Archbishop Romero and the struggle for social justice--and the film depictions of him.

Lately, I've been thinking about Romero as a bureaucrat, as a middle manager in the church.  We might say, "Wait, he was an archbishop--that's not so middle management!"  In a way, yes.  But in a way, Romero reminds me of a department chair in charge of a department of priests.  In my school structure, there's not a lot of upper management--and maybe that's why I see him as a middle manager.

I also see his story as similar to many of us--we go into our careers dreaming of ways we'll set our various industries on fire and change them.  And then we might find ourselves in various Siberias, toiling away, wondering how our bright futures came to this.

I've been thinking about the fact that Romero came into greatness late in his life; he was born in 1917, and I don't think he did his best work until the 1970's,, in his late 50's/early 60's.  Looking at the trajectory of his life from the middle years of the century, one would not have predicted that he would speak so eloquently about injustice and the need to fight against it.

In fact, many scholars believe that he was chosen to be Archbishop precisely because he was expected not to make trouble.  All that changed when one of his good friends, an activist Jesuit priest, was assassinated by one of the death squads roaming the country. Romero became increasingly political, increasingly concerned about the poor who were being oppressed by the tiny minority of rich people in the country. He called for reform. He called on the police and the soldiers to stop killing their brethren. And for his vision, he was killed as he consecrated the bread for Mass.
During Holy Week, I think of Christ's story too--far away from the power structures of the day, he changed the world.  And he changed the world by challenging the power structures--and for this, the forces of empire killed him.

I see a similar story in Archbishop Romero's life.  And I see similar stories all around me--the powers and principalities of the world do not like the threats contained in Christ's message of love and radical hospitality.  We should not underestimate the forces of darkness.

I wish I could end with a reassurance that the system will be changed if we just take action--but Holy Week takes us in a different direction.

Romero's life story shows that the system will resist change violently.  But the Passion story shows us that even the violence wrought by unjust earthly systems can be changed into a force for redemption and resurrection.  Humans may not be able to force that change--but God can.